CPR may be completely revised soonPurdue engineer says that instead of breaths and chest compressions, we really ought to just push on the abdomen, which would both circulate blood and encourage airflow

FEC rules that political websites are exempt from campaign-contribution rulesThat means the Internet remains a haven for free speech, which is a good thing. Campaign finance regulations are a pretty bad way to deal with political speech to begin with: Instead of obsessing over the amount of money that's spent on politics, we ought to be more concerned about the tax money spent by politicians. The more government spends, the more useful it is to have influence over politicians; conversely, if politicians didn't do very much (which was what the Constitution actually calls for), there wouldn't be much incentive for anyone to try to buy them off with political contributions. Campaign-finance regulations are a weak bandage for the wrong symptom, not a real cure for the true problem. Related: Russia's President Putin has just announced that his successor will be elected on March 2, about four months before the US political parties anoint their official candidates.

The best quote ever about CommunismRonald Reagan: "How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." It's true: Their books are so patently ridiculous, it's depressing to realize what horrible influence they had.

Some poor schmucks fell victim to another online stock scam todayAndover Medical, Inc. issued a press release today indicating that it had nothing to do with a ridiculous series of spam messages sent out today as part of a pump-and-dump scheme against the company's stock. Unfortunately, some of the recipients obviously fell for the scam -- witness the fact that thousands of shares traded today on a stock that hadn't seen any volume in weeks. People need to know that when they receive pump-and-dump scam messages by email, they need to ignore them. No one's giving you a stock tip; they're trying to conduct a scam. Worse, there's at least some chance that the crooks behind it are involved in organized crime or even terrorism. The September state of spam report from Symantec says that a larger number of crooked sites are coming from China than before, too.

Zimbabwe clearly on the brink of collapseWhen the country's main bakery says it's down to just two days' worth of flour, time is clearly running out. Hyperinflation has brought Zimbabwe to its knees, and we've been able to see it coming since at least August of last year. Good fiscal and monetary policy aren't just nice to have; they can mean the difference between life and death. An out-of-control central bank can kill far more people than any incompetent surgeon.

UK regulators OK hybridization of human and animal embryosEven the people in favor of the plan admit, "It does seem a little abhorrent at first analysis." But they say they don't want to create weird cow/human hybrids, but rather to use cow eggs (with the nucleii removed) as vectors to help make human stem cells divide, which may be a way to derive new human organs for those who really need them. It's probably a halfway sensible idea, especially since so many people die each year because they can't get replacenemt organs. And it may allow scientists to get around the use of cells from human embryos, which is what people tend to object most to. Supposing you could choose to use your own cells and have them injected into a cow's (de-nucleated) egg in order to generate your own replacement kidney or heart, you would probably agree to such a lifesaving project. Realistically, it's not just about saving people who might die without transplanted kidneys or livers: In the end, anyone who dies from heart disease is technically a victim of organ failure, too. What if you could replace your own heart with a new one bio-engineered from the first?